There’s no word yet whether Republicans and Democrats will resume negotiations this week on an insulin assistance program, after Governor Tim Walz called for public meetings while G-O-P lawmakers insist those sessions should remain private. Carleton College analyst Steven Schier says there’s a “big partisan divide” on whether insulin manufacturers should help pay for the program. “If you try and bridge that divide in public, it’s very unlikely that you’ll get some sort of compromise,” Schier says. “I think it’s going to have to be a back room conversation that leads to a compromise. Now so far we’re very far away from that.”
Schier says if lawmakers want to make insulin a winning partisan issue, they should publicize it as much as possible — but if they want to solve the problem, they should sit down in private and see if they can bridge their differences.